


Gypsy Soul

by ignipes



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-13
Updated: 2005-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A love story in ten parts.</p><p>We were born before the wind<br/>Also younger than the sun<br/>Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic.</p><p>-- Van Morrison, 'Into the Mystic'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gypsy Soul

_We were born before the wind  
Also younger than the sun  
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic._

\-- Van Morrison, 'Into the Mystic'

 

**i. hope it don't rain all day**

Sirius stares out the window, scowling. "Fucking rain," he says. "We should be building a fucking ark."

Across the room, Remus sighs audibly. "I'm terribly sorry," but he doesn't sound sorry at all, "that I have failed to provide you with weather appropriate to your visit. I am a terrible host."

Sirius turns to look at him; Remus is still sitting with his back against his bedroom wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, still flipping through one of those stupid comic books that no self-respecting fifteen-year-old should be caught dead reading. "You are terrible," Sirius says, a little meanly. "I'm fucking bored. This is stupid."

"You don't have to stay. You're welcome to go home. Floo's downstairs." Remus doesn't even look up from the comic book. On the cover, a vampire in a lurid red dress swoops down on a cowering wizard.

"That stuff's for kids," Sirius points out, flopping over onto his back. "Little kids. Five-year-olds. I can't believe you still read it. That's pathetic." Something pokes into his spine, and he squirms around, reaching to pull a quill out from under him. He throws the quill across the room; it hits Remus' bare foot, which twitches slightly in response.

But the rest of Remus does not react. Bugger him, he looks like he's actually _reading_ the fucking comic, not just holding it in front of his face as an excuse to ignore Sirius. Annoyed, Sirius searches around for something else to throw. Remus' room is always full of junk, never organised or tidy or even very clean. Sirius doesn't understand how he can stand to live in such a mess. He decides on a shoe, a filthy trainer with grass and mud stuck to the bottom, and throws it at Remus. The shoe hits the comic book. Sirius hears a page rip.

Remus looks up, raising a single eyebrow. "You don't have to stay."

With a groan, Sirius rolls over, facing the window again. "Fucking rain," he says again.

-

**ii. all the night's magic seems to whisper and hush**

The terrace is warm and quiet, the music and laughter muffled, the October breeze gentle and playful. Remus leans against the rail, looking out over the garden. He's drunk and tired, but his blood is racing and every inch of him feels alive, ready to burst into laughter again, like he has been with every toast and every dance all evening.

Behind him, the door opens, and for a moment the music and laughter are louder, flowing out into the night. Then the door closes and it is hushed again. Footsteps cross the stone terrace, stopping just behind him. He doesn't need to turn; he can feel Sirius' warmth, hear his breathing, smell the champagne on his breath.

Arms slip around his waist, and Remus leans back, smiling.

"Whatcha doing?" Sirius murmurs, pressing his lips to Remus' hair.

"Nothing. Just wanted some air."

"Mmmm. It's crowded in there. Some party. Some wedding."

Remus closes his eyes, tilting his head slightly when Sirius kisses his neck. Inside, there is a shout of laughter and a joyous bellow. "They're happy," he says, with perfect simple honesty. Anyone could see it: James grinning like a fool from the moment Lily stepped onto the aisle, Lily glowing like an angel and dancing on air, everyone around them full of smiles and laughter, the men toasting, the women leaking happy tears.

"Yeah, they are." Sirius' whisper changes into a quiet chuckle, and Remus knows without asking that he's remembering roars of laughter following his best man's speech, James' mortification and Lily's smug, satisfied smile. "They are," he repeats, tightening the embrace, brushing his lips against Remus' neck again. "So am I."

-

**iii. take away my heartache, in the night like a thief**

The flat is dark. Sirius turns on the light, drops his jacket on the sofa, and finds the paperwork on the table. He recognises the seal immediately: the sterile, official stamp of the Werewolf Registry. Cursing quietly, Sirius glances at the calendar on the refrigerator. He had forgotten about the appointment, forgotten where Remus spent the day.

He calls out, "Remus?" but receives no reply. He begins flipping through the stack of papers. The titles and headings jump out at him: _Recent Legislation, Tracking Improvements, Capture Procedure, Punishment Protocol._ With every page, his pulse quickens, and his hands are soon shaking with barely-controlled rage. _Extermination Technique, Containment Charms, Regulations for Law Enforcement (Unforgivable Curses), Employment Restrictions, Activities Requiring Registration._ Sirius shoves the stack of papers away; several fall off the table and slide across the kitchen floor.

He turns away and calls again, "Remus?" Still, no reply. Frowning, Sirius walks down the hallway toward the bedroom. "Remus, are you--"

In the bedroom doorway, he stops. Remus is lying on the bed, curled onto his side, facing away from the door. He's wearing pyjama trousers and no shirt, and in the faint light Sirius can see that his hair is still damp from the shower.

Sirius watches silently for a few minutes, his anger draining out of him, leaving a dull, empty, aching hole inside. He can't tell if Remus is asleep or not.

He steps into the room, slips out of his robes, kicks his shoes aside, crawls onto the bed behind Remus. He kisses Remus' shoulder, and the damp hair at the back of his neck, and runs a hand slowly along Remus' upper arm. He doesn't say anything. He knows that Remus has had too many words today -- _forbidden, prohibited, restricted, illegal_ \-- knows that nothing he can say aloud will chase those words from his mind. He speaks instead with the touch of his hands and the brush of his lips. He speaks a line of kisses down Remus' spine, a warm hand slipping beneath the waistband of his trousers. He whispers with a warm breath on the small of Remus' back, a play of fingertips across the hair below his navel.

He does not say anything, but he hopes desperately that Remus understands, understands the anger that he left quivering in the kitchen with the papers, the words that are caught in his throat, the promises he is placing across Remus' skin with each silent touch. Sirius slides up to the pillow again, lifting himself on one elbow to see Remus' face.

Suddenly Remus turns, rolling over with a sound that's not quite a sigh and not quite a whimper, and sinks toward Sirius on the soft mattress. He looks up for just a moment, his eyes wide and dark in the scant light, then tucks his head and burrows closer, his damp hair cold against Sirius' chest.

Sirius wraps his arms around him and pulls him near. He exhales slowly, silently, and closes his eyes.

-

**iv. barefoot gypsy players 'round the campfire sing and play**

One moment of distraction and Sirius snatches the bottle from Remus' hand and runs away from the campfire, cackling triumphantly. Remus lurches to his feet to follow. The beach tilts wildly, the fire dances to the side, the others are laughing and Sirius is escaping, escaping with _his_ bloody bottle of Firewhiskey. The fucking bastard. After several steps he finally manages to run in the right direction, away from the fire, away from the voices and the crowd and the light, into the treacherous dark beach that won't fucking stay _still_ for just a moment.

He runs for twenty whole steps, maybe ten, into the dark, then finds himself face down and laughing again. He rolls onto his back, spitting the sand from his mouth, and the stars spin overhead. He hears a shout, and a splash, and he pushes himself onto his knees.

Somebody -- Sirius, of course it's bloody Sirius, nobody else is that mad -- is running at the edge of the water. A bottle flies through the air; Remus sees the arc of spilled liquid, _his_ whiskey, damn it, he didn't give it permission to fly, a brief spray of firelight and starlight, then it is gone. And Sirius, stupid bloody fucking Firewhiskey-stealing Sirius, is splashing through the surf, flinging his shirt aside, falling over in the water as he sheds his trousers, damp clothing dropped in dark lumps on the beach and pale naked skin glowing, vanishing beneath the dark water, appearing again like an apparition from the waves.

-

**v. we were born before the wind**

The roar of the motorbike is swallowed by the wind and the vast empty sky. Cold wind before him, Remus pressed warm against his back, the bike is rumbling beneath them, almost a living thing, a growl and a _purr_. Sirius is grinning, gasping in the thin, frozen air. England races beneath them, so far away the towns look like fairy lights, the cars like fireflies in a dark wood.

He feels Remus lean forward, feels warm hands beneath his shirt in a grip that is decidedly not for safety only, feels hot breath on his ear and hears an urgent, beguiling whisper: "_Faster_."

Sirius throws his head back, laughs, and accelerates.

-

**vi. play in dust and dream that it will never end**

Remus walks through the dark rooms. _Clear it out, anything that might be ours._ The words echo in his mind, but distantly, across a great distance. _We don't know who owns it now._ They have already taken everything away, everything that might put an Order member in danger, everything that does not belong in this grim, empty place. _He made a will, but the traditions in these pureblood families are unclear._ It is safer this way, to remove all traces.

They had agreed that Harry should inherit the house. _I don't want it. I don't need it._ Agreed, that is, if that was the right word for two stubborn men butting heads over a stupid will for weeks. _I don't need you to prove anything to me, Sirius. Stop being ridiculous._ Arguments in the kitchen, arguments in the library, arguments in the bedroom.

The house can keep the arguments, Remus thinks savagely, pulling open another dark door, peering into another dark room. The house can keep the arguments, the fights that went nowhere, the stupid sullen silences, the angry retorts and bit back replies, the lost, desperate eyes watching him leave again, turning away, closing the curtains.

But the house is greedy. It will also keep the faded blanket on the sofa in the parlour, where they lay wrapped together during the cold winter storms. It will keep the rug on the floor before the fireplace, a tattered old thing that cushioned aching knees and tired backs. It will keep the table in the kitchen, the mugs that hid sly smiles, the soft sound of sipped tea and morning laughter. It will keep the ridiculous old mattress in the third floor bedroom, sagging in the middle, making them roll toward each other and wake up curled together, even if they were not touching when they went to sleep. It will keep the dark wood panelling in the second floor hallway, the fading shadows of bodies pressed against the wall, the ghosts of clothing trailed up the stairs. It will keep the spontaneous Christmas carols, the quickly muffled snickers in the foyer, the echo of a drunken chase and a clumsy laughing tackle at the end.

Remus pauses in a doorway, leans heavily against the frame, closes his eyes.

The house is greedy, jealous, relentless. It will keep all of that, and everything else.

-

**vii. cards in the dark and you lost and you lied**

Rabastan Lestrange has lost his mind.

Sirius can hear him whimpering in the next cell. Crying for his mother, his brother, his father, his Dark Lord. They all begin crying before long. And then they stop and are silent forever.

Sirius leans his head back against the stone. He does not close his eyes, does not press the heels of his hands to his eyes, does not cover his ears. He looks around the cell; it is daytime, though the difference is scarcely noticeable. He can see the seams between the stones of the walls, the rust on the iron gate, the filthy blanket in the corner that is his bed. He can smell the stench of the prison, fear and sweat and urine and shit and blood, and he can also smell, weaker and fainter, the ocean far below. He can hear them all breathing, crying, dreaming, begging. He can feel the sunlight through the window, barely a breath of warmth.

Something turns over in his mind. Sunshine.

Springtime. It is springtime, somewhere. Winter has passed.

He can feel his throat, dry and aching, and he can feel the pain of his nails dragging on the stone. He can feel the hard floor beneath his bottom, the hard stone at his back.

Winter has passed, and nobody has come for him.

There are so many things he can see and feel and smell and hear, so much that is inescapable. The fortress does not leave room for doubt. The others go mad, but Sirius knows exactly where he is.

Nobody has come for him.

He wonders if the boy he remembers ever existed at all. It seems unlikely. There are no smiling, warm-eyed boys here. There is only stone and a sliver of sunshine across the floor.

-

**viii. lost and double-crossed with my hands behind my back**

Remus touches his wand to the map and says, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Words unfurl across the parchment, so familiar his heart clenches at the memory. He traces the handwriting with his finger, scarcely daring to breathe lest the letters flutter away and vanish. Then the map appears, an impossible maze of rooms and words, and he stares at it for a few moments before remembering his purpose.

"Right," he says to himself. His voice sounds muffled and small in the cluttered office. "Let's see what the kids are up to." In the tank, the grindylow splashes and gurgles in response.

It takes a few moments to find them, but they are exactly where he expected them to be, in Hagrid's hut. He watches them for some time, watches the tiny names dances and bounce on the parchment, letting his eyes stray across the rest of the school: students in the library, in the dorms, in the corridors; professors at work in their offices or relaxing in their quarters; house-elves scurrying in the kitchen.

He glances back at Hagrid's home. The three kids are leaving the hut now -- no, four.

Remus blinks and his heart stops.

Four names.

_Harry Potter. Ronald Weasley. Hermione Granger. _

_Peter Pettigrew._

"That's impossible." His voice breaks roughly, a croak of disbelief. He lifts his wand and points it at the map, then hesitates. "It must be broken," he murmurs to himself, following the four dots intently. "It must be--"

A flicker of motion. Another tiny dot appears on the map, emerging from the forest, racing toward the other four.

_Sirius Black._

Remus' throat goes dry. He grips and regrips his wand; his palm is suddenly sweaty.

_Peter._

The Marauder's Map never lies. They were careful. They were bloody careful about that.

_Sirius._

Remus jumps to his feet, knocking his chair over, and dashes from the room.

-

**ix. by the winding stream we shall lie and dream**

Sirius is lying on his back on the ground, eyes closed against the speckled sun that filters through the trees. Remus' head is a heavy weight on his stomach, his hair warm and soft between Sirius' fingers. The water burbles and laughs over rocks in the little brook beside them, a song to mingle with the breeze through the leaves overhead.

"We could stay here," Sirius says, even though he knows it isn't true. The sun will set; the woods will grow cold. The summer will fade and the stream will freeze, and they will find themselves in other places, other times. "We could stay here forever and never leave."

It is so long before Remus answers that Sirius thinks he is asleep. He continues to thread his fingers through Remus' hair, a very small part of his mind telling him that he's acting like a bloody girl, one of those annoying girls who goes on and on about hair and finds every excuse in the world to touch him -- or, worse, to touch Remus. Stupid girls.

"Okay," Remus says finally.

"Okay?"

"Okay. We'll stay here. Forever."

Sirius smiles. But there is a tiny pain in his chest, a twinge of remorse that it cannot be true. "Promise?" he asks, playfully and hopefully.

"Promise. Now stop pulling my hair. That hurts."

-

**x. ask you not to read between the lines**

They do not make promises.

They make dinner in the tiny kitchen; they make lasagne and they make a mess. They make ice cream in the summer and spiced wine in the winter; they make garden plots in the spring and piles of leaves in the autumn. They make the neighbourhood cats flee up trees in terror. They make each other laugh until it hurts, and they make up for it by kissing the hurt away.

They make quiet conversation, in the shade of the oak tree in the garden. They make each other angry, and then they make up. They make accusations and apologies; they make themselves reconsider and reconcile. They make love, whenever possible. They make each other moan and gasp and writhe and come, and they make a warm nest in the blankets of the bed, arms and legs entangled, hearts beating together.

They make the motorbike fly. Sometimes they make it home before dawn. They make little explosions and foul-smelling potions and dangerous experiments. They make the windows of the house rattle with music and laughter. They make a hot fire on the hearth and a messy bed on the sofa. They make friends on the beach, laughing children who beg their mothers for a big black dog. They make each other blush and stammer with sly whispers in the ear. They make each other smile.

They do not make promises anymore, but they make plans.

Sirius creeps across the bed, fully dressed, and pokes at the Remus-sized lump of blankets and pillows and sunshine. "Remus," he whispers, poking again, "it's time to go. We're going to the shore today, remember?"

The lump grunts.

"You have to get up now."

The lump stirs. From deep within the bundle, muffled and hoarse, a voice replies: "Make me."


End file.
